Eucharist and Unity - by Keith Watkins (Paperback)

About the Book

An engaging, strikingly disclosive, and provocative memoir of a Disciples professor and scholar

Book Synopsis

With this memoir, Keith Watkins has gifted us with a thoughtful and engaging account of his own theological developments over the last seven decades, and in so doing this professor-pastor offers us an autobiographical account that opens out to tell a broader intellectual history of Disciples since the 1950s, especially around the interrelated themes of the Eucharist and Christian unity. This theological memoir will be of interest not only to those who study Disciples history and thought-although it is a must read for them-but those with an interest in the fields of ecumenism, modern American religious history, practical theology, and eucharistic studies will find much to savor in these pages as well.

Review Quotes

"More than rehearsing biographical details, Professor Watkins identifies and reflects on the theological dynamics at work in his worlds that led him towards the Disciples and into a scholarly career that began in church history and then brought the resources of that discipline and his emerging theology into the service of worship and into conciliar ecumenism and the search for a truly united (and uniting) church. ... Readers in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will want this memoir for the insight it gives us into how the Lord's Supper in the context of liturgy is at the heart of our movement's life and mission. Readers in the broader Stone-Campbell Movement will want this book because it touches-with considerable sympathy-some of the important points of commonality and difference from the perspective of a Disciple. Readers in the Liturgical Renewal Movement and the conciliar Ecumenical Movement will want this book because of the clarity with which Watkins describes these phenomena from an insider's point of view. Keith was there."

- From the "Foreword," by Ronald J. Allen, Professor Emeritus of Preaching, and Gospels and Letters, Christian Theological Seminary

"An engaging, strikingly disclosive, and provocative memoir of a Disciples professor and scholar. It is important reading for anyone interested in such topics as the unity of Christians, especially at the Lord's Table, the numerical decline of Disciples and other "mainstream" denominations, and the ways that mainstream pastors have led their congregations to new vitality and effectiveness."

- D. Newell Williams, President and Professor Emeritus of Modern and American Church History, Brite Divinity School

"With this memoir, Keith Watkins has gifted us with a thoughtful and engaging account of his own theological developments over the last seven decades, and in so doing this professor-pastor offers us an autobiographical account that opens out to tell a broader intellectual history of Disciples since the 1950s, especially around the interrelated themes of the Eucharist and Christian unity. This theological memoir will be of interest not only to those who study Disciples history and thought-although it is a must read for them-but those with an interest in the fields of ecumenism, modern American religious history, practical theology, and eucharistic studies will find much to savor in these pages as well."

- Joel A. Brown, President, Disciples of Christ Historical Society